1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to an authentication method for authenticating devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
During these years, a system has been examined in which devices installed in a household, such as home appliances and audiovisual (AV) devices, are connected to a home area network (HAN) and the devices can communicate with one another and with a server and the like outside the HAN.
In such a system, if an unauthorized device is mixed in the devices connected to the HAN, the unauthorized device might perform a malicious process, that is, for example, the unauthorized device might obtain information from another device connected to the HAN and transmit the information to the outside of the HAN.
In such a system, therefore, the validity of the devices connected to the HAN need to be checked in order to assure the safety of the system.
An authentication technique performed on the basis of a public key infrastructure (PKT) is currently known as a technique for checking the validity of devices (e.g., refer to Atsuko Miyaji and Hiroaki Kikuchi, “IT Text Information Security” Ohmsha, October 2003 and the like).
In the authentication based on the PKI, the validity of a target device is checked using a private key and a public key certificated issued by a certification authority.
If a private key might have leaked to a third party, the certification authority performs a process for revoking a public key certificate corresponding to the private key and distributes a certificate revocation list (CRL), which is a list of public key certificate identifiers (IDs; identification information) regarding revoked public key certificates (e.g., refer to National Security Agency, “Suite B Implementer's Guide to FIPS 186-3 (ECDSA)”, [online], Feb. 3, 2010, [Retrieved on Jun. 24, 2014], Internet <URL: http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/ecdsa.pdf). An authentication person, who checks the validity of a device, carries out, when performing authentication, a search to determine whether a public key certificate ID of a public key certificate of a target device is described in the CRL distributed from the certification authority. If so, the person determines that the device is not valid and a result of the authentication is negative.
Examples of the related art include the following: Wi-Fi Alliance, “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Wi-Fi Protected Setup: Easing the User Experience for Home and Small Office Wi-Fi® Networks (2010)”, [online], December 2010, [Retrieved on Jun. 24, 2014], Internet <URL: http://www.wi-fi.org/ja/file/wi-fi-certified-wi-fi-protected-setup % E2%84% A2-easing-the-user-experience-for-home-and-small-office-wi>; Elaine Barker and three other authors, NIST Special Publication 800-56A Revision 2, “Recommendation for Pair-Wise Key-Establishment Schemes Using Discrete Logarithm Cryptography”, [online], May 13, 2013, National Institute of Standards and Technology, [Retrieved on Jun. 24, 2014], Internet <URL: http://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-56Ar2.pdf>; and D. Forsberg and four other authors, RFC5191, “Protocol for Carrying Authentication for Network Access (PANA)”, [online], May 2008, Internet Engineering Task Force, [Retrieved on Jun. 24, 2014], Internet <URL: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/pdfrfc/rfc5191.txt.pdf>.